


Across the Rubicon

by Thatkindghost



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017), PKNA - Paperinik New Adventures
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Experimentation, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 01:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18906892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkindghost/pseuds/Thatkindghost
Summary: When Donald wrestles his sister out of the spear of selene’s pilot chair, he doesn’t expect to be locked inside without any way to disable the take off sequence, and none of them expect the cosmic storm- or the alien ship creating it. (Duck Avenger AU where Donald takes the SOS instead of Della)





	Across the Rubicon

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is an idea that's been rattling around in my head for ages, I just had to write it down! if you actually like this let me know and i’ll try and work on it some more

Donald tackles Della out of the pilots seat.

She squawks in surprise, twisting under him and the rears her head back, slamming her helmet into his beak. He yelps in pain, ducking his head to keep her from pulling the same stunt again, and struggles to keep a hold of her. He needed to get her off this death trap- the space suits Uncle Scrooge had custom made for them had parachutes, if he could just push her out the door she’d be fine.

“Donald!” She thrashes and he plants his feet and pulls, dragging her across the floor, “Let go!” she shouts, and there’s an edge of panic, “I already started the take off sequence! You have to get out of here!”

“I’m not letting you do this!” He snaps, latching onto her legs, “You can’t leave them behind!”

She twists so she’s on her back, smacking at his chest and trying to pry him off, “I’ll be right back! Just once last avenue! One more adventure!”

She wiggles her left foot free and kicks him, sending him sprawling across the floor and his face twists, “It’s always one more something with you! You have to slow down! You have kids!” and it’s an argument they’ve had a thousand and one times before.

The Spear of Selene seems to hum louder and Dellas face falls, and she scrambles to her feet, reaching down and grabbing his arms, “You have to get off!” she pulls him over to the hatch he’d come in at and rushes to open it, the latch grinding in protest as she slams it open.

“I won’t make it down in time!”

She opens her mouth to say something but before she can get it out, he’s barreling into her, shoving her out the door and suddenly she’s freefalling. She pinwheels her arms, remember her parachute and pulls the ripcord. It catches the wind hard and the straps yank at her shoulders, almost too soon she hits the ground with a solid _thud_ , rolling to try and recover. It had broken most of her fall, just not quite all- and she’d have the bruises to show for it days later.

“But you will.” Donald mutters to himself, watching her make it to the ground. He whips around, tearing through the SOS- he’s gotta find the spare suit. He wasn’t lying before- if he just tried climbing down, he’d never make it before the ship kicked off. He’d have to jump like Della. He’s elbows deep in the supply closet when he hears something slam. He practically leaps back up the ladder into the cockpit- the hatch had closed and locked on its own. Donald grabs the handle and pulls violently, but it doesn’t budge.

He vaults over the back of the captains chair to sit in it, the communications screen is blinking- and incoming call, he smacks the buttons around it, miraculously hitting the right one to answer the line, “Della!” Scrooge freezes, mouth gaping when the wrong twin appears on the screen, “What- Donald?” He asks, astonished, “What are you doing in there?”

“I’d love to chit-chat, Uncle Scrooge, but i’m running out of time! This thing is going to take off with me in it!” He glances down at all the buttons and controls sitting in front of him, blinking lights and dials staring unhelpfully back at him, “What do I do?”

“Just get out of there lad!” Scrooge leans forward, face crowding the screen, “There’s a spare suit under the pilots chair! Use the parachute to abandon ship!”

Donald’s already shaking his head even as he grabs the suit from the compartment beneath the chair, he hadn’t noticed it until Uncle Scrooge pointed it out, “The door’s locked, I can’t open it.”

Under his feathers, Scrooge’s face goes white, “Locked..?”

The door behind Scrooge slams open and Della’s standing there, she’d torn off her helmet at some point and all she was left in was the bottom of the space suit, “The ships in the last stage of take off! Donald, you have to cancel the launch!” She practically leaps across the room, yanking the microphone from Scrooge’s hand, “You have to cancel the launch!” she repeats frantically, the ship making a new and scary sound.

“I don’t know how! It’s not as if there’s a cancel lift off button in here!” he rakes his eyes across the control panels. He pulls the space suit up to his hips before Della is rattling off orders at him.

“If it’s not, put the yoke in resting position! And then-” It’s a bunch of techno jargon he can’t keep up with, push this and flip that and turn this, he can’t keep up.

“I don’t understand,” he says and the ship lurches under him, he grabs the arm rests of the pilots chair to keep himself steady.

Della on the screen gasps, clutching at the mic in her hand desperately, “It’s too late.” She whispers and then, with more authority, “Put the suit on Donald. We can’t stop the launch now, you’re gonna have to pilot this thing. We’ll get you into orbit and then we’ll come for you, okay? We’ll come.” She’s trying to be steady, but her voice shakes. He zips up the suit and twists the helmet down so it seals properly.

The Spear of selene trembles and shudders, Scrooge and Della turn their eyes to different screen, face lit up by yellow and white and red as the ship blasts off. Della starts shouting at him through the comms again, more directions- she’s more in control now, steady, dumbing down her words so he can follow along. “The switch right below the biggest yellow dial, yes, flip that one now-” he doesn’t dare watch the ground grow smaller and smaller below him, he can’t stomach it. This is the scariest thing he’s ever done, all his attention needs to be here and now and on Dellas every word.

“That’s it, lad!” Scrooge says encouragingly, and Donald smiles shakily through the G-Force of leaving Earth’s atmosphere.

Blue and white clouds bleed into black, white stars like pinpricks appearing on the horizon, and it’s beautiful. For half a second he forgets where he is, what’s happening to him- and then what looks like billowing black smoke and smog starts to swirl around him, flashes of lightning in between the dark clouds, and Donald’s face falls.

“What?” Scrooge asks, crowding past Della once he watches the dread rise on Donald’s face.

He’d almost made it, too.

“A cosmic storm.” He says breathlessly, overwhelmed suddenly by how out of his depth he was- the Spear of Selene begins to shake and Donald grabs the stick tightly, trying to steady her, and he feels like he’s holding a live wire as it trembles beneath his hands.

“What? No! The skies were clear!” his sister yelps and there’s fear in her voice.

They’re yelling, telling him to try and avoid it, pull up- but there’s nowhere to go where it won’t reach him- and he can see through it, almost, like he’s flying through a tunnel. Maybe if he could just- just make it to the end-

Their yelling turns to white noise under the thundering of his heart in his ears when the ship appears. It’s massive, shaped like a dome with an orange beak at the front, so entirely foreign and terrifying he’s struck dumb by the shock and fear lancing through his system, right in the middle on the cosmic storm, the epicenter. It’s so much bigger than his tiny, tiny ship. He is all too aware, suddenly, how insignificant he is.

“Uncle Scrooge!” He cries out in blind fear, but when he looks back at the screen it’s black. The cosmic storm- or whatever that ship is- knocked out his radio. He’s flying right towards it.

He grabs the control and pulls sharply to the right just so he’s flying away from the thing, heart leaping into his throat when the massive duck bill begins to open. The Selene shudders but ever so faithfully turns, arching him away from whatever monstrosity he’d almost been forced to face.

And then a white light tears through the night sky and locks onto the Selene, a tractor beam, and yanks it backwards. Donald has half a second to curse himself for not buckling in before he’s thrown from his seat when the ship lurches sharply. He’s tossed out of the cockpit and down the ladder into the main communal space inside the ship, landing hard and sliding across the floor as the ship is manhandled across the stars. The ship shudders to a stop and he does too, he’s strewn across the floor, breathing hard.

There a sharp twinge in his left arm, and when he goes to push himself up it collapses under the pressure, but he couldn’t focus on it right now. His helmet cracked at some point in the chaos, hissing our air, and he pops it off and tosses it aside just to stop the noise so he can think. There’s a moment of silence and he struggles to his feet, glancing around, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The hatch in the cockpit makes a thunking noise, unlatching, and its opened. Donald backs away from the ladder, pressing himself flat against the farthest wall, eyes stuck on the opening above him. Slowly, smoke begins to filter in.

Donalds mind jumps into action and he dives for the supply closet, struggling with the combination for half a second before throwing it open as white smog fills the last breathable air he’d had. Either they were trying to poison him or knock him out, and he couldn’t let either happen. He rummages in it for half a second, pulling out exactly what he’d been looking for.

Oxy-Chew. If Donald made it back, he’d have to thank Gyro for that one.

He chews through a stick as fast as he can, smiling at the flavor, “Black licorice.” he mutters thankfully. Gyro had the worst taste, but luckily so did Donald.

As the gas fills the room, Donald clamps a hand over his beak so he won’t breath anything but the oxy-chew in his mouth, skirting around the room to position himself half-hidden behind the supply closet, giving the ladder a wide berth. There’s another sound and then there are footsteps in the cockpit, and sound of several something’s coming down the ladder. When they get to the bottom, Donald almost swallows the gum in shock. They’re huge, with thick smooth purple skin, a purple suit on top Donald could have sworn was just an extension of its skin if not for the raised seams, and they’ve got duck feet and duck bills even though they are most certainly not ducks. They’re tall and lanky, sickeningly thin, with big arching metal shoulder pads, long spindly arms and blue gloves. There’s three of them, only one has a futuristic looking gun, and they sweep their eyes around the room.

Donald decides quickly that if he’s going down, he’s going down swinging.

He launches himself out from behind the closet with an angry wail, fists flying, and by sheer surprise he manages to take them down. He gets the one with the gun first, flinging the weapon across the room before climbing up the alien and kicking him in the face, using him as a springboard to leap at the next intruder and using the same tactic. He scrambles up the ladder while they lay there, stunned, and he paused at the open hatch, unsure of what’s on the other side. He squares his shoulder and leaps out of the hatch, into what he thinks might be his last fight.

The aliens are big and strong and he takes down, surprisingly, a lot more before they manage to subdue him. He bruised and sore and bleeding from where one had given him a wallop in the beak. He’s locked in futuristic looking handcuffs behind his back and when one of the Evronians yanks him along, his arm arcs with fire. He’s worsened whatever injury he’d gotten in the kidnapping. Oh god, it was starting to sink in, he’d been kidnapped.

They walk him through a series of interlocking hallways almost aimlessly, he’s certain they’re trying to disorient him but he keeps careful track of where they’ve been and starts building a map in his head. He’d been on adventures with Della and Scrooge, he knew how to keep his bearings when things were happening too fast, and he was great with his sense of direction. He could use those skills now. The walls of the ship are yellow, a sort of bronze color, with supports like ribs lining the passageways.

They lead him out into a large atrium, the black of space in front of them, stars blurring into white lines and Donald realizes with sinking certainty that they’re moving, and that they are moving away from earth. Away from home.

 _We’ll come for you_ , Della had said. Donald didn’t think they could come this far.

There’s another alien here, but he’s different. He’s tall and purple with a duck bill, of course, but he’s dressed in heavy teal robes with ornate silver trim, and he has thick yellow protrusions coming out of his skull, almost like hair but too thick and rubbery for Donald to accurately compare the two. The aliens that dragged him in kick the back of his legs and force him to his knees, and they speak to the obviously higher ranking alien in front of them in a garbled language Donald knows doesn’t sound like anything on earth.

The alien in charge seems to move across the floor without lifting his feet, almost like he’s gliding, and it makes Donald shudder with how unnatural it is. He stops in front of Donald and looks him over, inspecting him sharply. His hands flash out, yanking a feather from his head roughly.

Donald hisses at the prick of pain, takes a startled inhale and, even though the oxy-chew is still steadily supplying him with oxygen, he realizes that he can breath this air too.

“I’m not trying to kill you, duck.” The alien says, regarding the feather in his hand, inspecting the pinprick of blood on the calamus, “My name is Gorthan, I am the head scientist of the Evronian Empire. My crew and I have been sent to Earth to observe your species.”

It sounds almost innocuous, but Gorthans voice is like honey mixed with arsenic, “Your species has a funny way of observing.” Donald grimaces.

“I am not afraid to seize an opportunity presented to me.” Gorthan tucks the feather into his sleeve, standing at his full height, “‘Be not afraid of greatness: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ You are my opportunity to get a… much closer look at the earthlings. I have use for you yet.”

Donald grinds his teeth, “That shakespeare quote is a _dirty joke_.” He spits.

“Take him to the labs.” Gorthan dismisses with a sneer, and they drag him from the room.

“Aw Phooey.” Donald whispers mostly to himself.


End file.
